How to Get Your Brand on 'Oprah'

She's the queen of commercial endorsement, launch pad for four dozen books on the top of The New York Times bestseller list, fabled hawker-donor of Pontiacs and patron saint of everything from soft-rock sensation Josh Groban to Boudreaux's Butt Paste.

Yet she doesn't do structured brand-integration deals or, technically, at least, live commercials. And her company, Harpo Productions, tightly controls advance and post-publicity about the praise that gets parceled out. "No one tells Oprah what to say," said one PR professional. And, indeed, that may be much of the commercial appeal of Oprah Winfrey, America's foremost arbiter of middlebrow taste. She is -- by the estimate of PR pros who besiege her producers for a chance to have their brands reflect the warm light of Oprah's presence -- the very pinnacle of product publicity. And yet, despite Oprah Winfrey's and Harpo Productions' dogged efforts to protect her brand and, by extension, the many smaller ones that draw energy from it, Oprah has taken some notable dings lately, largely of her own making.

Her endorsement of Barack Obama clearly helped Chicago's favorite son become a front-runner but also raised Ms. Winfrey's unfavorable ratings, allowing her to be overtaken by none other than daytime-talk rival Ellen DeGeneres as the most popular celebrity in the U.S. in a Harris Interactive poll earlier this year. Ms. Winfrey's later endorsement of new-age religion guru Eckart Tolle may seem a safer bet than her former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But it also angered some conservative Christians and inspired the American Family Association to attack the once-unassailable Ms. Winfrey.

All of this seems to leads to one question for marketers: Is it worth the trouble? Sliding approval ratings or no, getting on "Oprah" remains "the gold standard," as one PR person put it. Consider that a mere rerun of an "Oprah" show in which Dolly Parton appeared in December 2003 boosted sales of her CD 70% and pushed it up nine slots to No. 4 on the Billboard charts. Boudreaux's Butt Paste got mentions and features on a lot of shows in 2004, including NBC's "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno and ESPN, but it was an appearance by founder George Boudreaux on a "Quirky Ways People Have Gotten Rich" episode that crashed the brand's website with 70,000 hits.

An appearance on the same episode by Build-A-Bear Workshop CEO Maxine Clark the year before the company went public produced fears among some analysts the following year about the difficult comparisons created by the consequent two-quarter sales bump. Since Ms. Winfrey selected Mr. Tolle's "A New Earth" for her book club earlier this year, the club has gained more than 1 million members, and Oprah.com has logged more than 30 million streams and downloads of related webinar classes, according Harpo. So how do you get your brand on "Oprah"? It helps a whole lot if Oprah likes your brand or its ads. It helps more still if Oprah's producers like you. And it possibly helps even more if Oprah likes you or the person endorsing your brand. Oh, and another, murkier point: Some PR people believe it may help to "do a sponsorship," as one put it.

Both Harpo and marketers, however, deny quid pro quos. And the successes of such smaller brands as Kitchen Aid and Dolly Parton indicate one need not pay to play on "Oprah." 'Free' publicityYet Harpo, in a statement, leaves things a tad vague on that point. "There's been a constant and unwavering stream of unsolicited product pitches for the show," a spokeswoman said. "Editorial and creative decisions drive mentions and product inclusions on the show. If a brand gets mentioned, it is as often serendipity as it is business. When we do partner with brands, it is usually because we have an editorial direction we're pursuing, and their partnership enhances the editorial content of the show."

TNS Media Intelligence data appear to show little connection between being a big spender and getting a lot of "free" publicity. Few brands have had better luck on Oprah than Unilever's Dove. It's had three major segments on the show in 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively, each handled by independent Edelman, New York. All focused on ads from its "Campaign for Real Beauty" by Ogilvy & Mather. It just so happens that the campaign kicked off in late 2004 with ads and other tie-ins with Hearst's O, The Oprah Magazine and Oprah.com.

Raising eyebrows in a Wall Street Journal interview in October 2005, Silvia Lagnado, then Unilever's global brand director on Dove, said: "Just last week, we started a relationship with Oprah. We are sponsoring her show. She mentioned the Dove products on the show and had the women in our ads in their underwear in the show." "I'm sure Oprah really does like the ads," author Virginia Postrel wrote on her Dynamist.com blog. "But I doubt that the 'Dove girls' would be on the show without Unilever's advertising checks. Dove also just happened to choose Oprah's best friend [and O Editor at Large] Gayle King to receive their first Dove Real Beauty Award."

Dove and Harpo, however, deny any direct ad-for-publicity deal. "Dove/Unilever has been a partner with 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,' Oprah.com, and O, The Oprah Magazine for more than four years, and their values and creative approach are very much in line with ours," Harpo's spokeswoman said. In fact, TNS data indicate that Unilever's chief rivals have been spending far more on Oprah properties without getting anywhere near the in-program love.

True, Unilever spent $16.4 million on the syndicated TV show and $32.8 million on the magazine and website for a total of $49.2 million in the past four years. Its spending on the magazine and its website more than doubled to $12.7 million between 2004 and 2007. But Unilever's rivals, including Procter & Gamble Co. ($74.1 million), L'Oréal ($49.3 million) and Johnson & Johnson ($71.5 million), have outspent the company in the period. The June issue of the Oprah magazine is either a testament to a sturdy Chinese wall between editorial and advertising in the Harpo-Hearst alliance or the world's subtlest brand integration.
Article continued here

Source: AdAge.com

Press Release SEO Tips

Many search marketing tactics come and go, but one channel of promotion that has steadily evolved is the practice of optimizing press releases for search engines. While it’s true that the future of the traditional press release has been up for debate over the past few years, wire services and the web sites they syndicate content to continue to produce results for the clients of savvy public relations professionals and online marketers.

Yahoo News is still more popular that MSNBC, AOL News or CNN. Being able to rank well on the most popular online news web site as well as Google News simply by optimizing and distributing a press release offers attractive benefits at a nominal cost.

In the course of prepping for an upcoming public relations workshop where I’m speaking on a panel about press release optimization, I thought I’d do a review of the top wire services. Part of that presentation also includes press release optimization tips from industry friends that work at the newswires, where thousands of press releases are distributed daily.

I thought I’d share these tips with Online Marketing Blog readers that will not be in San Francisco this Friday.

Sarah Skerik - Vice President, Distribution Services - PR Newswire

Write a pithy (80 character or less,) descriptive headline that includes important keywords. Don’t be coy with this important real estate. Utilizing important keywords in the headline, and then again in the lead (and throughout your message) reinforces the relevance of your message for those important terms.

Remember that SEO is really the art and science of being found by your audience. For that reason, you have to use the language they use when searching for or discussing topics related to your product or industry. Put more simply - don’t use jargon!

Joe Beaulaurier - Interactive Marketing Manager - PRWeb

Link your strategically important search keywords to deep relevant pages in your site, not the front page. Use your keyword links to connect the strategically important keyword terms in your press releases to the most relevant deep pages within your site. If they don’t exist, create appropriate deep pages (aka landing pages) and place content on them that is specifically relevant to the keywords. For instance, if you are selling bicycles and are linking the words “mountain bikes” from within your press release, be sure to link to the page that details your company’s mountain bike offerings.

Laura Sturaitis - Senior Vice President, Media Services & Product Strategy - Business Wire

I think my best tip for clients on the topic of optimizing their press release for search and social media, is to begin to think of the press release not just as a media relations tool, as it has been historically, but instead to view creating a press release as compiling a mini web page on the news or topic being written about.

If you think of a press release like this from the very moment that you open your Word document to start writing, you immediately begin to write it differently, for example:

• You use formatting like bold, italics, bullet points, short headlines and subheads that not only makes the page easier to read online, but also enhances SEO.

• You insert a company logo for branding and embed photos, graphics and video links in your press release to show what you are writing about in pictures, graphs, sound & motion, rather than simply trying to describe it in words…very web friendly.

• You incorporate links from your targeted keywords in the press release, not only to have your release rank for those keywords in the search engines, but also so your press release can operate as a portal to additional information on those topics, driving traffic to your website and hopefully to landing pages utilizing the same keywords.

The beauty of thinking of the press release in this way is that when these things are considered at the outset in writing the release, you can then measure how successful your release has been not only by how many news stories or blog posts were written about it, but also how well the release ranked in the search engines and how well it drives traffic, sales, or other actions from online visitors to your website.

I often say in the world of user generated content, the people in the best position to deliver meaningful, relevant content are professional communicators and the press release can be a powerful tool to do this because of its extensive reach online not only as a media relations tool but now as a direct-to-consumer communication via search engines and other online reach.

Kevin Dill - Product Manager, Social and Multimedia Products - Marketwire

Many people believe that SEO involves just researching and improving upon press release keywords, phrases, META tags, etc. There are other ways to search engine optimize the press release for additional search engine pickup or search engine visibility (SEV).

Add an audio link such as a podcast or product announcement into your press release. If you have an RSS feed associated with your releases, you can direct Apple iTunes to pick up the audio automatically and include it in a freely available channel on iTunes.com. With 70 million iTunes subscribers, why not? There are also several audio aggregators on the web which spider audio links and make them keyword searchable.

Consider choosing a newswire which will allow “external” multimedia content hosting. For example, YouTube for video or Flickr for photos. These sites are spidered by the major search engines as well as being searchable “social” directories within the site. YouTube is the third largest search engine.

Now you have created a press release which is truly “optimized”. You have taken your multimedia elements and integrated them into large compartmentalized sites for expanded availability. You will get additional search engine pickup of your content external to normal press release distribution channels as well as additional presence in popular searchable portals.

Source: TopRankBlog.com

The Next Frontier In Press Releases

Are the traditional, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE press releases and press kits going the way of the dinosaurs? Is it time to move to social media friendly press releases or are they just a waste of time and money?

Ford is using them http://media.ford.com/products/focus08/index.html
HP did it http://www.marketwire.com/mw/rel.jsp?id=738205

Webit PR says it's the wave of the future - see part of their release below and go to http://www.webitpr.com/realwire.asp?id=21 read the full text

What the Social Media News Release is

The Social Media News Release (SMNR) is a new kind of press release aimed at (but not exclusive to) both journalists and bloggers. It does not include the 'spin' of the traditional press release, but provides multimedia content in an accessible format that can easily be repurposed and shared on blogs, websites and social networks including MySpace and Facebook.

Unlike the traditional press release, the content of the SMNR is deconstructed so that the core facts, quotes, contact details and boilerplate are all individually segregated to allow users to disseminate its various elements. It can accommodate images, audio and video (including embedded social media video including YouTube) and incorporates many of the Web2.0 and folksonomy tools popular among social media users today.

Characteristics of the realwire Social Media News Release:
The realwire SMNR is based on the SHIFT Communications template and includes:

• Social bookmarking options to allow users to 'tag' the SMNR to popular social bookmarking sites.
• The use of hyperlinks in the copy body.
• RSS feeds to allow subscribers to receive updated content in real time as it is published.
• Optimised for visibility in search engines.
• Links to related news for further background info.
• Incoming blog links.
• Technorati tags.
• The ability for people to register and leave a comment on any particular SMNR - creating a two way dialogue unlike the 'top down' delivery method of the traditional release.
• The ability to brand the SMNR with the client's logo.
• The ability to ‘domain map' the release to the client's website URL (E.g. http://news.clientwebsite.com) giving the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) benefits to the organisation.

For the rest of this article, click here

Source: MNPRblog.com

PR is useless

...when actions tell the real story.

Karen Hughes spent $900 million of Americans' money to convince the Muslim world that our elected leaders in Washington aren't insane. Worldwide opinion polls say otherwise.

Walmart has probably spent close to the same amount of money trying to convince us it isn't the greediest company in the world. But its actions tell us the real story. Today, it's how Walmart is trying to avoid paying state taxes.

Comcast can say it's "comcastic" all it wants, but when its technicians fall asleep on customers' couches, or grandmothers with a heart condition get so frustrated by the company's inattention they smash up a local office, then no amount of professional PR can mask its dreadful operations.

Hundreds of smaller businesses pay PR firms to spam bloggers with meaningless press releases. That's because they don't know how to tell their own stories with actions, not words. They don't understand that real word of mouth, real PR, is generated at the root levels.

The root levels are the clerks, the sales people, the support staff, the receptionist, the call center people, the on-site technicians and consultants, or the police officers, the clerks at the government offices, or the nurses who take your temperature and blood at the hospital. It's their work that generates real PR.

The best PR comes from the smallest of actions by the root-level people. They smile when they first meet you. They call you by your name. They compliment competitors. They don't blame you for their system's misgivings. When forced to make a decision, they always, always, always do the right thing, even if it's not in the economic or political interests of their employer. They break the rules when it's obvious they must.

That's real PR. It's the total sum of stories people tell about you.

Source: Church of the Customer

Looks like the HSG scooped the WSJ on this story!